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T battled through wall after wall of icy precipitation as it landed into the city. A growing unease settled over me during the trip, intensifying as I shuffled through the airport. I was unhappy about having to be the town where I had been raised, after making a home on the other side of the world for what had felt like a an eternity.

After a few days, I went out to get a haircut. My thoughts was distant, lingering over an vast expanse of water, when I became aware of something hit the pavement. I gazed down to see a bird on its side, sprawled, and trembling.

The impact took place just as kids were filing out from the local primary school and so within minutes a group of little ones had assembled, surrounded by their mothers and fathers. This ring of bemused faces peered down at the pigeon, uncertain what to do or say. The kids were more definitive: “Papa, she needs a vet, can we call an animal ambulance?” I took off my jacket, crouched down and picked up the pigeon into it. “No problem, sweet, the kind man will help her!” remarked one mother with a sense of relief. I had been transformed into the emergency transport for this pigeon that had just fallen suddenly, involuntarily, as I had a few days before.

I trudged home, arms held out, with the bird nestled inside the jacket.

Unbeknownst to me that my on-the-spot decision to aid Belinda (the name I chose for my new friend) would direct me to a network of Mancunians giving up significant amounts of their time to provide not only ambulances for feral pigeons but diagnostic imaging, convalescence, and even “avian physiotherapy”.

I retrieved a small container for Belinda, lined it with an old T-shirt, and put her inside. Every half hour or so, I’d open the box just long enough for us to awkwardly lock eyes.

Those instances of common perplexity marked my desperate search for what to do after that. I phoned friends for guidance and one suggested trying online groups, where, to my astonishment, I stumbled upon a bird rehabilitation group, and submitted a request to become a member.

An Anarchic Model

Boasting thousands of members, the group operates on an organic system: someone in Manchester stumbles across an hurt pigeon, a urgent post is made, then a comment section “evaluation” follows. If the bird is judged in need of an scan, someone with a veterinary contact can get it one; if it needs rehabilitation, a “rehabilitator” will volunteer to care for the bird.

Volunteers each have their own highly developed skills, whether it’s mending broken wings or treating wounds. Their tremendous, cooperative effort for the pigeons of the city depends completely on goodwill.

Belinda was promptly assessed with neurological problems, likely a head injury, and assigned to a rehabber who would administer medication and a program of gentle physio. We never found out exactly what made her to plummet. I assumed the role of pigeon ambulance once more, riding the tram across the city with Belinda in a container on my lap so she could receive the treatment she required.

An Unexpected Lesson

After finding this secret pigeon “support system”, I began to feel much differently about being back in my home town. I doubt any of the places I had called home while away could have anything comparable. It also struck me that this was not the first time I’d been involved in a pigeon recovery: almost 20 years earlier I’d observed one plummet from the sky into the grounds of my high school. Again, children gathered around the bird, but only one – my best friend at the time – had the nerve to rescue it and take it to a safe place.

The friend in question has since been lost – one of several friends to pass away in the years before my exit from Manchester. I came to see that this had been a big part of what had made the return so painful.

Pigeons as Companions

Pigeons have a tradition as “emotional support” animals, especially in the certain regions. Workers started to raise the birds because they gave them company and an opportunity to look up at the open air between long shifts of subterranean gloom. During the hard times, workers on the assistance also found solace in pigeons, but keeping them was considered a sign of “despair”.

Nowadays, pigeons are often dismissed as unintelligent, dirty or a general nuisance. Before finding the rehab group, I had spoken to a veterinarian, who told me: “if you bring it here, leave that in the parking lot and we’ll euthanise it.”

That? Not her. Although improbable to ever take to the skies , she has taken to her newly land-based life with grace in a volunteer’s home. Each satisfied sound, often elicited by her favourite food, peas, feels like a example in resilience and strength – and I am eternally thankful to her for unveiling for me a different facet to the city I believed I understood.